In Nigeria, teaching is looked upon as a career path we stumble on into or a career path that condition forces us to take, taking into consideration the rate of unemployment and the number of engineers working in the bank this fact seems almost indisputable. It also indicates why
Nigeria ranks 161 of 181 countries on the Global Youth index.
A lot of the failure in the education system is attributed to teachers’ wages, which is usually very small, or inadequate funding as pertains to public schools and in some cases, the curriculum is blamed for the poor quality of education in Nigeria.
Taking all these factors into consideration the quickest and most glaring solution to the education problem would appear to be more funding in both the private and public spheres of education. But more funding for what exactly? There is a saying that the lack of money is hardly ever the real problem and this proves to be true in the case of the Nigerian education system. If more money is suddenly made available the first point of call would be to increase teachers salaries, invest in infrastructure and beautify the environment. However, after a matter of time, the story of poor education will continue.
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A more effective solution is to invest in training teachers to specialise in functions that will improve the quality of education such as instructional design, learning experience design, and curriculum development amongst a host of other functions required to ensure and maintain the quality of education. Instead of having only teachers within institutions of learning such institutions should have Learning Experience Designers, Instructional Designers, Curriculum Designers, Education Researchers, Educational Consultants, School Psychologists… amongst a host of others.
For the education section in Nigeria to see a positive change, investing in the education sector through specailsied staff trainings is a necessity.
BIO
Celine Aju is a recent law graduate from Babcock University, with five years of experience in the non-profit sector. She is the co-founder of the Book Bank Africa, an initiative that provides educational materials for students and promotes literacy, she has served as a content writer for Illino Cultural Association and collaborated with Yadah`s Box in the Launch of the Ajegunle Pad Bank – a subsidiary of Dreams From the Slum Initiative. Her passion for education reform spurs her to explore the impact of technology on learning and teaching methodology.
